Year: 2018

Two-lane 3.5 W electrical interface enables high-speed enterprise networking Transceiver form factor doubles bandwidth and supports fast line rates Backwards compatibility with existing SFP interfaces and new SFP-DD styles Rome, Italy – September 17, 2018 – The Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (SFP-DD) Multi Source Agreement (MSA) Group announces the release of the v2.0 specification for the SFP-DD pluggable interface. Dedicated to fostering the development of next-generation SFP form factors used in DAC and AOC cabling, and optical transceivers, the MSA consortium released the initial SFP-DD specification version 1.0 in September 2017 and earlier this year released version 1.1. The newly updated specification version 2.0 reflects enhancements to the mechanicals, extended modules and enhanced polarizing key of the high-speed, high-density SFP-DD electrical interface, targeting support of up to 3.5 W optical modules in an enterprise environment. The SFP-DD form factor addresses the technical challenges of achieving a double-density interface and ensuring mechanical interoperability for module components produced by different manufacturers. The innovative electrical interface is designed to support two lanes that operate up to 25 Gbps NRZ or 56 Gbps PAM4 per lane modulation — providing aggregate bandwidth of 50 Gbps NRZ or 112 Gbps PAM4 with excellent signal integrity. ‘’Through strategic collaborations we work to increase speed, density and scalability in next-generation servers,” said Scott Sommers, Chair of the SFP-DD MSA. “We effectively enhance the roadmap in network applications to meet the challenging demands data centers and enterprise networking platforms are up against.” It is anticipated that many MSA members will be demonstrating SFP-DD at the upcoming European Conference on Optical Communication, Sept 23rd-27th in Rome, Italy. SFP-DD MSA founding members include Alibaba, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell EMC, Finisar, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, Intel, Juniper Networks, Lumentum, Mellanox Technologies, Molex, and TE Connectivity. Contributing members are Accelink, Amphenol, AOI,

Two-lane 3.5 W electrical interface enables high-speed enterprise networking Transceiver form factor doubles bandwidth and supports fast line rates Backwards compatibility with existing SFP interfaces and new SFP-DD styles Chicago, IL – January 26, 2018 – The Small Form Factor Pluggable Double Density (SFP-DD) Multi Source Agreement (MSA) Group is pleased to announce the release of an updated specification for the SFP-DD pluggable interface. Dedicated to fostering the development of next-generation SFP form factors used in DAC and AOC cabling, and optical transceivers, the MSA consortium released the initial SFP-DD specification (version 1.0) in September 2017. The updated specification (version 1.1) reflects enhancements to the mechanicals and drawings of the high-speed, high-density SFP-DD electrical interface comprising a module and cage/connector system targeting support up to 3.5 W optical modules in an enterprise environment. The SFP-DD form factor addresses the technical challenges of achieving a double-density interface and ensuring mechanical interoperability for module components produced by different manufacturers. The innovative electrical interface is designed to support two lanes that operate up to 25 Gbps NRZ or 56 Gbps PAM4 per lane modulation—providing aggregate bandwidth of 50 Gbps NRZ or 112 Gbps PAM4 with excellent signal integrity. In combination, an SFP-DD server port and QSFP-DD switch ports can effectively double port density in network applications. The SFP-DD interface helps meet increased demand for port density and scalability in next-generation servers. Extending speed and density, the SFP-DD electrical interface expands on the existing SFP pluggable form factor, a widely adopted interface used in data centers and other networking platforms. A key guiding principle of the MSA 1.1 specification is backward compatibility. The SFP-DD port is backwards compatible with legacy SFP and SFP+ style cables, modules and AOCs, and all new SFP-DD electrical interfaces. SFP-DD MSA founding members include Alibaba, Broadcom, Cisco, Dell EMC,

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The SFP-DD MSA will define a new pluggable form factor that supports 2 high speed electrical interfaces connecting to the host. This will include a mechanical module, a 1×1 Cage with connector, thermal, pinout and management specifications. The SFP-DD will be able to support both optical and copper interfaces, but those physical layer specifications will be done outside of the MSA specification as is usual for form factor MSA specifications.